This week's lessons ring out a theme gratefulness, the gospel
lesson
being a standard lection for Thanksgiving. More than commenting
specifically
on the lessons I'd like to explore the theme of gratitude.

Can Christian theology begin to do for gratitude what it has done
for
love? Namely, develop our understanding and experience of it as
more than
a feeling or emotion but also as a way of acting, a way of living.
When
Christ asks us to love our enemies, we have had to assume that he
hasn't
meant just a feeling. It is difficult, if not impossible, to feel
love toward one's enemies. But we can act loving toward
them. We
can accept them as fellow children of God and refuse to return
harm. We
might even be able to find ourselves identifying with them and
achieving
some empathy.

I'd like to suggest a similar experience of gratitude. There are
many
situations in life and many experiences that feel more like curses
for
which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to
feel grateful.
But perhaps gratitude is also a way of acting, a way of living.
What I
have in mind is a way of acting which presumes upon the grace of
God. Gratitude
is a way of living that never lets go of living in dependence on
God's
grace. The psalmist, for example, will often times lament a
terrible situation
for which it would be difficult to have the feeling of
gratitude.
But the psalmist nevertheless makes the lament to God. The
psalmist
continues to presume, to call upon, God's grace.

The opposite of gratitude, then, would generally be the way of
sin:
living in the illusion that one is independent of God's grace,
that one
is equal enough to God that one doesn't really need God. Gratitude
is a
particularly difficult way of living in our modern age, I think,
because
we have a distorted view of both freedom and equality. Gratitude
as a way
of living must presume at least one true inequality: that between
Creator
and creature. God the Creator is the source of life; we the
creatures are
the recipients of life. There is no getting around our dependence
on God's
gracious power of life.

As I've previously suggested in these commentaries: we cannot
have true
equality with each other as children of God unless it's founded on
that
basic inequality between us and our heavenly parent. Otherwise, as
mimetic
theory helps us to understand, we fall into rivalry with one
another. The
way out of rivalry is for everyone to defer to God's desire, to
jointly
seek God's will. The way out of rivalry is to be disciples of the
true
Son who was able to defer to the will of his heavenly Father.

Jesus lived a life of gratitude. With only five loaves and two
fish
to feed five thousand, he gave thanks to God, broke the bread, and
gave
it away. On the night in which he was handed over, he gave thanks,
broke
the bread, and gave it away -- all as a sign of what he did with
his life
the next day. When we live the eucharistic life, we find real
freedom from
the fear of death. We are able to trust our lives to the God who
is an
unending source of life.

2 Kings 5:14-17

Reflections and Questions

1. This story is alluded to in Luke 4:17. Jesus implies to his
hometown
crowd that he will not cater to them; he will bring his ministry
to outsiders
like Elijah did with the Widow of Sidon and Elisha with Namaan the
Syrian.
The people of Nazareth react in a rage and try to lynch Jesus, to
force
him off the cliff. See comments for Epiphany
3C and Epiphany 4C.

2 Timothy 2:8-15

Reflections and Questions

1. In 1995 I used the Pauline image of dying in Christ as a
jumping
off point for a sermon "Healing
through
Death." We need to die to the sin of righteous violence and
take up Jesus' way of unconditional love, even toward those we
deem enemies.
We were observing "Pink Ribbon" Sunday that day, lifting up those
who battle
breast cancer. The themes of dying in Christ and battling cancer
are roled
in with the image of a computer virus around an episode of Star
Trek:
The Next Generation entitled "I,
Borg."

2. "if we deny him, he will also deny us." Is this true? What
about
Peter who denied Jesus? Wasn't he forgiven instead of reciprocally
denied?
The next line seems to imply Christ's faithfulness to us even when
we aren't
faithful to him: "if we are faithless, he remains faithful -- for
he cannot
deny himself." So I'm doubly puzzled by the previous phrase
regarding denial.
These two lines seem to contradict each other. And Jesus clearly
didn't
deny Peter after Peter denied him.

Luke 17:11-19

Exegetical Notes

1. If this were Mark's Gospel, we might take the mentions of
Samaritans
in Luke 10 & 17 as an inclusion since Mark is famous for that.
What
about Luke? Could he have an inclusion in mind here? Luke 10:25
begins
with the question about the greatest commandment, to which Jesus
most immediate
response lifts up a Samaritan as exemplary in the second part of
the greatest
commandment: the "Good Samaritan" shows us how to love our
neighbor. In
this next mention of a Samaritan in Luke's Gospel, isn't this
tenth leper
an examplary of first part of the greatest commandment? Jesus
queries,
"Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except
this foreigner?"
(Luke 17:18) And the irony of a Samaritan who knows how to truly
worship
God is even more pronounced than a Samaritan who knows how to love
neighbor.
The Jewish hatred of Samaritans stemmed from their differing
worship practices.
The Samaritans had it all wrong. Yet this Samaritan, in bowing
down and
giving thanks to Jesus, is the exemplary of true worship. How
might we
read all that comes in between as an inclusion?

2. Michael Hardin, at PreachingPeace.org
(the "Anthropological Reading"), offers the reading of Jesus
command --
"Go and show yourselves to the priests" -- as a plural, "priests,"
that
points to the differing worship practices. The nine Jewish lepers
were
to go to their priest; the Samaritan to his priest -- thus, the
plural
"priests." The Samaritan ends up choosing his priest as Jesus,
modeling
true worship.

3. The only other mentions of Samaritans in Luke are the Parable
of
the Good Samaritan (10:25-37) and as Jesus begins what in Luke is
called
the Journey to Jerusalem:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set
his
face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On
their
way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for
him; but
they did not receive him, because his face was set toward
Jerusalem. When
his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want
us to
command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he
turned
and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village. (Luke
9:51-56)

This passage is most often interpreted with a negative focus on
Samaritans.
My Oxford Annotated NRSV Bible, for example, titles this passage (in
the
footnotes) "The hostile Samaritans." I find this to be absolutely
incredible.
To me the passage is clearly about the rebuke to the disciples for
assuming
the Samaritans to be hostile -- which means modern interpretation
hasn't
advanced a wit over the disciples. As Jesus turns his face to his
own offering
up to our engines of righteous violence, the disciples display a
fundamental
misrecognition of his mission in their wishing for an act of divine
righteous
violence upon their enemies.

In a published article, "The
Work
of René Girard as a New Key to Biblical Hermeneutics," I use
Luke 9:51-62 as an example of how mimetic theory can help us to
correct
such mistaken readings (link to excerpt on Luke
9:51-62). I argue that "they" in "they did not receive him"
actual
refers to the messengers, not to the Samaritans as is usually
assumed.
Jesus has set his face to Jerusalem, unbeknownst to the others,
and so
he changes his plans about going to the Samaritan town. The
advance guard
of messengers don't receive him because he has changed his plans.
The disciples
wrongly assume that Jesus has changed his mind because of the
Samaritans,
their enemies, and wish divine fire down upon them. They coudln't
be further
from the truth, and Jesus rebukes them. Supportive of this
reading, in
my view, are the two subsequent uses by Jesus of Samaritans as
exemplifying
both parts of the Great Commandment: worshiping God (17:11-19) and
loving
neighbor (10:25-37). (For more on Luke 9:51-56, see Proper
8C).

4. There are four times in this passage that healing is
indicated, and
the different words that Luke chooses to convey it are
interesting. First,
the two most common words used to indicate healing in the NT are iaomai
and therapeuo; the NRSV, for the most part, adopted a
convention
of translating the first as "heal" and the second as "cure."

In the case of these lepers, the main word that Luke uses to
indicate
the healing in vs. 14 & 17 is katharizo, "cleanse,"
"make clean."
In between, in vs. 15, the major witnesses use the word iaomai.
But there are several ancient texts that keep it consistent at
this point
using the word katharizo. The significance of the word
choices is
that Luke's Jesus changes to a very different word for the final
pronouncement,
saying to the Samaritan leper in 17:19 (NRSV), "Get up and go on
your way;
your faith has made you well." "Well" is the translation of the
Greek word
sozo,
"save," "rescue." Especially if we take the lesser textual
witnesses, Luke
changes from "made clean" to "saved." Has there been a double
healing for
the Samaritan? Does sozo indicate a healing, a salvation,
for the
Samaritan that goes beyond the initial cleansing enjoyed by all
ten lepers?

Resources

1. Michael Hardin and Jeff Krantz, PreachingPeace.org.
Hardin brings mimetic theory to bear upon this passage as being
about the
perspective of the victim. These lepers are pushed to the margins
between
their homelands. The one Samaritan with none Jews is even the
lowest of
the low. Hardin concludes:

Not only do we have a group of marginalized lepers, but
that
group also has its singular marginalized person, the Samaritan.
Shall we
suppose that the disease of leprosy so united the lepers that they
no longer
were engaged by the victimage mechanism? Shall we suppose that the
nine
Jewish lepers did not in some fashion ostracize the Samaritan
within their
little circle? Would their leprosy have overcome the hundreds of
years
of social animosity that they carried with them in their
worldviews? No.
This seems to be implied by Jesus’ reference to the Samaritan as
an ‘allogenes’,
a foreigner. The Samaritan, in other words, is the victim par
excellence
in the story, he is the victim of the victims, yet it is this most
marginalized
one who truly sees (not at all an unfamiliar theme in the
gospels).

When all were healed and only one returned thanking God, where
did the
other nine go? They made a beeline back to the social matrix
from which
they had been thrust, back to families they may have missed,
back to the
world of social respectability. They made straight for the
religious dimension
of the sacral mechanism, the priest, who would declare them
socially acceptable.
They failed to see that God, in cleansing them, had already
accepted not
only them, but also their fellow leper, the Samaritan. A new
sociality
had been given in the miracle that they failed to grasp and so
they took
this gift from God and walked right back to the system that had
previously
extruded them without seeing or understanding that something
indeed was
‘bent’ about the system. Nor, as mentioned, did they see a new
thing had
occurred in their midst, the healing of a division that went
back hundreds
of years. Jesus brings healing to each of us and all of us in
order that
we might be one in Him. Do we see any clearer than the nine?

1. katharizo, "made clean," is a term of sacred religion
which
divides the world along lines of sacred/profane, clean/unclean.
When the
Samaritan, instead of doing his sacred duty by going to the priest
for
official pronouncement of his status of purity, returns to Jesus
giving
thanks, is Jesus' final pronouncement upon him referring to the
fact that
he has been saved from the system of ritual purity itself? His
faith in
Jesus has now taken him outside of the sacred system, rescuing him
from
its pronouncements?

On the theme of healing vs. ritual purity there is much from the
viewpoint
of mimetic theory during a four-week sermon series on healing from
Mark's
Gospel during Epiphany 2003. It might be most poignant to begin
with Mark's
story of Jesus healing a leper in Mark 1:40-45 (Epiphany
6B), which is paralleled in Luke 5:12-16 (but not part of
the Year
C Revised Common Lectionary).

2. What is the significance of this leper being Samaritan in
terms of
his religious duty to be pronounced clean? Would he have needed to
go to
a Jewish priest like his fellow cleansed lepers? Would he have
gone to
a Samaritan priest? Or is part of his returning to Jesus,
forsaking the
visit to the priest, due to the fact that he is a Samaritan and
had different
ritual requirements in the first place? In the latter case, his
differing
religious "faith" would have saved him the trouble of needing to
do what
the other nine Jewish lepers needed to do. (See Michael Hardin's
reading
in note 2 of the Exegetical Notes.)

3. When he saw them, he said to them, 'Go and show yourselves to
the
priests.'" What is Jesus doing here? In other stories of Jesus
healing
lepers, he makes a big show of bucking the purity system by even
touching
them when he heals them. And there's nothing about showing oneself
to the
priest. Here, it seems he keeps his distance, merely calling to
them to
go show themselves to the priests. He seems to be going along with
the
purity system. But, upon being made clean, the Samaritan forsakes
that
system to immediately come back to thank his healer and to praise
God.
Is his leaving behind the purity system the point of this story?
True faith
goes beyond the sacred system of clean and unclean to find a
compassionate
God who truly can make us "well." But, in that case, why does
Jesus tell
them to follow the purity system in the first place? Was his
telling them
to go the priests a test of sorts to see which ones had enough
faith to
forsake the purity system in favor of the truer, more complete
source of
healing, one which saves us from the ill effects of the purity
system itself?
In that case, it's significant that only the Samaritan, only the
one that
Jews considered as religiously inferior, was able to pass this
test of
true religion. Only the one designated as the outsider was able to
escape
the dis-ease of playing games of insiders and outsiders.

4. If the purity system itself is cause for dis-ease, then the
Samaritan
was the only one in need of a double cure from it. He was unclean
both
by virtue of being a leper and by being a Samaritan; his fellow
lepers
were only unclean in terms of their leprosy. The priest could
pronounce
the lepers cleansed of their disease, but they would not pronounce
the
Samaritan clean of his being a Samaritan. Only Jesus, the one who
would
expose the dis-ease of the sacred system itself, would pronounce
the Samaritan's
second cleansing, a pronouncement that effectively declares his
having
been rescued from the system itself. Jesus would let himself be
judged
unclean in order that the veil would be rent in two that keeps us
from
seeing the emptiness of the sacred system.

5. True faith. Is this story a follow-up for Luke to last week's
text
when the disciples ask for an increase in faith? See the comments
on the
Gospel for Proper 22C.
Also, 17:9-10
raises the issue of giving thanks.